The Tree and the Skyscraper
Cutaway drawing of Frank Lloyd Wright’s S.C. Johnson Research Tower from 1939, showing the building’s structure which was based on a tree.
Pictured above is a cutaway drawing of Frank Lloyd Wright’s SC Johnson Research Tower in Racine, Wisconsin, built in 1936. This little tower is famous for its structure, which functions like a tree. There’s a central trunk, or core, with floors cantilevering off it like branches. This removes the need for any perimeter columns since all the structural loads transfer back to the central core. There’s also the large taproot foundation, as Wright called it. This functions like the roots of a tree, providing stability to the overall form. Wright was well aware of the tree metaphor, and he used it to sell the vision to his client. It wasn’t the only time he tried to make a tower structure function like a tree, but it’s quite possibly the purist example of the metaphor to ever get built.
Trees and towers have a lot in common. They both act as vertical cantilevers, pushing up from the surface in order to reach high into the air. For a tree, this upward push is about survival. The higher the tree grows, the more access to sunlight and rainfall it gets. For a tower, the upward push is about profit and prestige. The higher the tower gets, the more floor space it contains, which leads to more money for its owner. Increased height also gives a tower more visibility and status, which serve to satisfy the ego of those constructing it. A tower can be tall, but if it’s the tallest, that means something apart from the height itself. A tower that bears the tallest label has out-competed all others that sought to achieve it. This draws more attention to itself and it’s owner, which leads to higher rents, and so on and so on. The same goes for trees. In the never-ending race for height in the forest, the tallest trees will get the most direct sunlight and their branches will catch and divert more rainwater closer to their trunks.
Section drawing of Frank Lloyd Wright’s S.C. Johnson Research Tower from 1939, showing the building’s structure which was based on a tree.
I’ve previously written about the conceptual link between trees and the human body, as well as the link between the human body and the skyscraper. With his SC Johnson Tower, Wright contributed to an ongoing dialogue between the tree and the skyscraper. Throughout the history of skyscraper design, the triad of root, trunk and branch have been reinterpreted many times, beginning with classical column design (base, shaft and cornice). Louis Sullivan first used the metaphor of a tree for tall building design in his 1896 article The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered, which Frank Lloyd Wright adapted and expanded on in his Story of the Tower article from 1956. The metaphor continues today, with contemporary architecture firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill linking some of their tower designs to tree trunks due to a similar structural design as the one shown above.[1]
Read more about how trees, mountains and caves relate to the human need for verticality.
[1] : Mays, Vernon. "Tree Trunk Towers: Cantilevered Floor/Super Core Structure." Architect Magazine, August 18, 2011.